Monday, July 24, 2017
By Kamal Swami
Mercedes-Benz Also Finding Opportunities For Electric Cars in India
It seems that struggle of US car maker Tesla for receiving substantial support from Indian government for launching luxurious electronic cars in Indian car market is soon going to get support from German car maker Mercedes-Benz. According to recent industry reports Roland Folger, Managing Director, Mercedes-Benz is willing to initiate talks with the Indian government for granting significant incentives to the manufacturers of electronic vehicles for launching these vehicles in Indian car market till the availability of necessary raw materials for manufacturing these cars becomes smooth.
In the words of Folger, their group is making huge investment in exploring the technology of developing electronic vehicles in global market and if sufficient support if offered by the government of India in this direction, then hopefully they will be able to make debut in this segment by 2020. According to Folger, “We would love to (bring in electric vehicles)… it mirrors our overall strategy…(but) it’s a catch 22 situation all over the industry. You need to reach a certain minimum amount of vehicles that you can sell consistently and sustainably to make it worthwhile investing in a factory. To put us in a position to do that, we need a ramp-up period when incentives are also extended to vehicles not manufactured in the country,”
Prior to Folger, Elon Musk, CEO of US based car maker Tesla had also reported to have talks with the Indian government in this direction. At that time Musk had also favored the tweet from Mr. Anand Mahindra, Managing Director, M&M, asking the car maker to bring his cars in the country. However, with that Mahindra also indicated that Tesla will require support from the ministry to initiate its plan successfully in the country.
Moving ahead Folger said that the sales of vehicles cannot touch the mark of 1,000 units sold within the period of a fortnight. Because, for that company will have to develop the database of customers, similarly the customers will also like to test drive the vehicle, wait for its feedback from other customers and look for various other factors.
It would be interested to the government of India is working on stopping the use of fossil-fuel vehicles by 2030 and encourage the use of electronic vehicles to protect the eco-system from the impacts of pollution.
